Transneft to complete Zapolyarye-Purpe oil pipeline by end of 2016

Transneft plans to complete the construction of the Zapolyarye-Purpe oil pipeline and put it into operation in the fourth quarter of 2016, company head Nikolai Tokarev said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The company's CEO said Transneft is implementing a long-term development program comprised of two components — a 690 billion rouble investment program and a 1.32 trillion ruble technological modernization program.

"This is a new oil-bearing region. It will connect Transneft's entire system with sectors where production is expected to increase significantly. We were counting on a 45 million [metric] ton capacity but now it is 32 million tons," he said.

The pipeline is designed to provide a feeding line from new fields in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area, the northern Krasnoyarsk Territory, Gazprom's Urengoi fields and Rosneft's Suzunskoye, Tagulskoye, Russkoye, and Russko-Rechenskoye fields, among others, to the existing network of oil pipelines.